Every day the NowCerts development team
receives requests about possible changes to our agency management system
software. While some requests are a little out there or too simplistic to be
taken through the design stage, others are very poignant and particular, and at
the NowCerts development team we seriously consider turning a mere customer
suggestion into a usable feature with the system software. This is nothing new
for us at NowCerts. Just today, for example, we had two separate requests for
feature changes, both of which stayed pretty much on the same page.
This is basically how the call process
went: “Hi, yeah, I have an issue here
that I really need help with,” the customer said. “Sure thing. Let's see if we
can get you straightened out,” replied one of the NowCerts customer service
reps. “Yeah, you see, I really want to create customized proposal forms. In my
agency, what we do is send out a quote request to the carrier or underwriter,
and we wait for that quote to come back. And rather than forwarding that
returned quote to the insured, we instead write up our own personal proposal
and send it to the prospect. We feel it's more personal that way...” “I
understand, sir,” the customer rep replied. “What would you like us to do?”
“Once we send that quote to the insured,
there's really nothing there to stop them from using the information we gave
them as leverage when contacting another agent. We feel this process, while
personal, is really just giving customers cause to shop elsewhere. My request
is that maybe you guys can put a new feature in your management system
software, one that allows us to create a really well-designed proposal form to
present to the prospect. Something that isn't flashy per se, but still has our
company's name, our logo, the agent's name – you know, information that's
personal to our brand. A personalized form like this, along with specific
information about the line of business, questions about the insurance type,
etc; these features may make the prospect more willing to stick with our
agency, since everything is already completely personalized for their insurance
needs.”
The suggestion was so good, in fact, that
NowCerts not only decided to turn this into an actual feature of the system,
but they decided to take it even farther. The plan, as it stands, is to add the
ability for an agent to map their own fields, to add more business lines via
the drop-down menu, and to have the system automatically populate created
fields with pre-filled data. It will take several stages before this feature is
complete, and the person in charge of this task will be Martin, one of the lead
developers and the veteran of the team. Martin will have the first stage of the
process ready before tomorrow afternoon, and the next few stages of the
feature, which include linking the Proposal Forms to the Acord Forms feature,
will be handled with the help of another great programmer, the rookie of the
team, Borkata. We will provide updates on this feature as they arise.
We also received another call today, from a
nice lady whose idea was to develop a feature specific to her agency. Of
course, we're not in the business of developing features only for one agency.
Anything that's good enough to make it to the system, we offer to the public at
large. Her idea was basically for a system feature which would only grant
access to users the manager allowed into the system. In other words, rather
than everyone with access to the system being allowed to prowl all over the
system, different permissions—ala government clearance badges—would keep
employee X regulated to zone Y. She also had another good idea, which we
decided to pursue, in that users of her system should only be allowed access
from the office, and during office hours. We really appreciated her foresight
in this regard, pointing out that a disgruntled agent may in fact tamper with
or pollute data somehow, so access need be restricted, if that is what the
system manager requires.
For this take, we've decided to entrust the
rebel himself, Mr. Rookie, Borkata, to the task. He's currently hard at work on
the changes via the Prospects section of the agency management system software.
They're currently coming along, and they should be done shortly. We'll keep you
abreast of the changes as they occur.
Meanwhile, another talented programmer,
Julian, has been given a serious task dealing with creating a commission
reconciliation feature. This area needs to be intensely specific and it demands
a very diverse range of skills. But Julian is as skilled at programming as Tom
Hanks is at acting; that is to say, there isn't a role Julian cannot play for
our team at NowCerts.
Peter, also known as our leader—or the “Big
Kahuna,” if you ask him—has also had a busy day today. One of our customers
wanted the data from their old, outdated content-management system transferred
to the new system they got from us. Typically, this is a request that may take
over a month. With Peter in charge, we're hoping to have it a lot sooner than
that. And wouldn't you know it; in less than 24 hours, Peter had the
information synced entirely and ready to transfer. Talk about commitment! We're
actually looking forward to this problem happening again for another customers.
Not to sound sadistic, but we're proud of Peter's abilities here, and we really
want to show them off.
This is just another day in the life of
NowCerts. Every single day we're dealing with requests like these and are
looking to push forward with the best possible solutions for customers. Stay
tuned to learn more about how we handle these issues with our expert team of
programmers and larger-than-life personalities.
